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Schmidt recalls changes to UB, statistics field
By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer
Although he officially retired in 1985, Richard Schmidt, professor emeritus in the Department of Biostatistics, has found it hard to leave UB.
Dick Schmidt (center) chats with Nancy
Barczykowski, senior staff assistant in the Department of Biostatistics,
and Alan Hutson, professor and department chair, during a surprise 90th
birthday party the department hosted for Schmidt on Tuesday in Fanny's
Restaurant.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI
A member of the university community for 65 years, Schmidt, who will turn 90 this weekend, still comes into his office in Farber Hall, South Campus, twice a week.
Schmidt's memories span a career in a field—not to mention a department—that has seen a lot of changes.
"I started full-time teaching in January of 1947," he recalled during a recent interview with the Reporter. "At the time, the department was called the Department of Statistics and Insurance in the School of Business Administration. [UB] was a private school. We had large classes and a full schedule."
After receiving his bachelor's degree in business administration from UB, Schmidt immediately began working as a "teaching fellow" with a full 12-hour course load. He earned an M.B.A. with minors in statistics, economics and marketing from UB in 1950 and received his doctorate in business economics from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 1954. He taught and worked on his master's degree at the same time, and returned to UB in the summers to teach while he earned his doctorate.
"Whatever I did, I worked hard," said Schmidt. "That made up for the things I didn't have."
His work ethic has served him from the start. As a 1934 graduate of Amherst High School, Schmidt entered the workforce during the "depths of the Depression." He had four brothers and sisters, and the family's financial situation was not good. He took classes at the Buffalo Emergency Collegiate Center only because there were "zero jobs," he said. He later took night classes at UB's Millard Fillmore College and found work at Lackawanna Steel Construction from 1937-40.
Schmidt married his high school sweetheart, Mildred Kegler, on July 7, 1941, but was drafted three weeks later. He spent five years stationed on bases throughout the United States and was still in the military when his daughter, Carol Lee, was born May 8, 1945. He noted the date: VE Day.
"I had no plans until I heard about the GI Bill," said Schmidt, who credits the program for his enrolling in UB in 1946 to complete the coursework he had begun before the war. Schmidt discovered statistics while taking a course taught by Robert Berner, now a professor emeritus in the School of Management. "I thought, 'What a wonderful field of study.'"
He finished his bachelor's degree in one year and earned his advanced degrees. He was appointed chair of the statistics department from 1955-59. In 1960, Schmidt spent a year overseas as an American Guest Professor at Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland.
But the trip that most influenced his career had come several years earlier in 1956: He traveled to New York City to take a six-week course on the UNIVAC I—the first mass-produced computer. Schmidt pointed out that at the time there was little interest in the vast machines whose computational power now makes modern statistics, as well as biostatistics, possible.
"I gave the first lecture at UB on computers on Dec. 26, 1956—the day after Christmas—at a special faculty meeting," he said. "I lectured for an hour or more and afterward a couple of my friends said, 'You're crazy.'"
He went on to teach a two-semester course on electronic business data processing. Since there were no computers on campus at the time, Schmidt took students to the Remington Rand Corp. on Washington Street in Buffalo to work on a UNIVAC I.
"It was much, much different than it is now," he said. "It was all done with electronic tapes." He explained that the 12,000 tubes contained in the computer, which filled an entire room, were cooled by a 50-ton refrigeration unit. A special team was needed to program and operate the machine, he added.
"At first it was tape—then after that, the [punch] cards," Schmidt said. "I had, I think, a ton and a half of cards. I had rooms full."
The first two computers UB purchased in 1962 were an IBM 1600 and IBM 1401, he said. The machines were housed in Sherman Hall, not far from Schmidt's current office. He said individuals or classes could sign up in two-hour blocks of time to use the computers, but since the machines were in high demand, that made for some odd hours.
"Two o'clock in the morning you would come to use the machine," said Schmidt. "The doors were locked . . . [but] the fellow before you would leave the window unlatched. So you would climb through the window." Often, he laughed wryly, "[The machine] would be jammed."
Schmidt co-authored two books on computers and business with a colleague from Remington Rand.
"In 1963, we wrote a book called 'Electronic Business Data Processing.' It became widely used," he said. The second, "Introduction to Computer Science and Data Processing," written in 1965, contained 10 examples of programs in different languages in the introduction alone. Schmidt has learned about 50 in his career.
"All I'm doing is learning languages, ever since," he said. "Now I'm learning the PC language. There's something interesting in the logic of programming that I like very much," he added.
The first master's and doctoral programs in statistics at UB were created in 1949 by then-department chair Zenon Szatrowski, Schmidt recalled, In 1954, UB produced its first M.A. in statistics, who went on to become a dean at Carnegie Mellon. In '65, after a short stint as a division in the Department of Mathematics, the Department of Statistics was re-established. Schmidt said the chair at that time, Norman Severo, strengthened the department, attracting such prominent statisticians as Seymour Geisser and Marvin Zelen, and the department rose to national prominence during the 1960s and 1970s.
However, the department experienced a decline, starting in the mid-to-late 1970s, when several key faculty members left the university. The department then underwent numerous permutations as divisions within other departments, the most recent being as a unit within the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
But statistics returned to its former status as a department—now the Department of Biostatistics within the School of Public Health and Health Professions—in 2003. Schmidt said the speed with which current chair Alan Hutson has restored the department is amazing.
"It's growing back; it deserves it," he said. "I believe it will be recognized as one the greatest [statistics] departments in the country."
Schmidt now comes to campus to work on his latest book on statistics. He also remains involved in the Buffalo Niagara Chapter of the American Statistical Association. A lifelong Buffalo-area resident who's never lived more than two miles from South Campus, he continued to maintain his longtime habit of walking to work from his home in Eggertsville until last year.
He also keeps active through travel. In the past several years, Schmidt has traveled throughout Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and returned last month from a three-week trip to China with his grandson. He also has a granddaughter and a 3-year-old great-grandson.
"Most of life you don't plan," said Schmidt. "It just happens. I didn't plan anything, it just worked out. It's worked out wonderful."